Posts Tagged ‘occupied West Bank’

Israeli Border Police may have saved the lives of hundreds or even thousands of Israelis Friday night.

They stopped what appeared to them a suspicious Palestinian Authority taxicab in Highway 60 in Samaria, north of Jerusalem.

Their search of the vehicle uncovered a cache of approximately 4,000 bullets used in M-16 semi-automatic weapons.

Even worse, the ammunition had been stolen from the IDF.

Police arrested three Arabs, two of them from Jerusalem and one form the Palestinian Authority. It is not known if the Arabs were linked to crime or terror, but it can be assumed that 4,000 bullets in the hands of Palestinian Authority Arabs would not be used by Palestinian Authority security officers to do what the Oslo Accords commit them to do – root out terror.

It also can be assumed that since several Palestinian Authority security officers have been involved in terror attacks on Israelis, some of those bullets would have ended up in their hands.

The official statement that the taxi cab was viewed as “suspicious” may be politically correct language for another capture of terrorists and their weapons thanks to Israeli intelligence.

In any case, those 5,000 bullets will be back in the hands of the IDF, which has to investigate yet another theft that may have been an “inside job.”

And Israelis can thank the security services for having possibly saved their lives.

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said in the Knesset Wednesday that he is freezing plans for more “goodwill” measures in the Palestinian Authority.

The IDF had planned to open more roads for Arabs in Judea and Samaria, even near Jewish communities, but Ya’alon, in response to a question by Jewish Home Knesset Member Orit Struck, said that “the escalation” of violence has convinced the IDF not to implement more easing of conditions, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Israel governments, primarily in the Olmert administration when Ehud Barak was Defense Minister, routinely followed orders from then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and removed roadblock after roadblock, moves that often were followed almost immediately by terrorist attacks.

But the Olmert administration was more interested in keeping peace with Washington rather than looking at the day after tomorrow. Today, it is understandable why Olmert did think far ahead. He was too busy concentrating one how to cover up his primary policy, pocketing bribes.

Barak , the Israel media establishment’s eternal hope to dump Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, never has been under serious suspicion – until this month, when Olmert’s turncoat Shula Zaken put the finger on him. It remains to be seen if Barak, who has extremely close ties with the military-industrial complex, will be investigated and charged. So far, he is clean.

Ya’alon’s disclosure comes on top of other measures Israel is finally taking after allowing a minority of Arabs in Judea and Samaria as well as in Jerusalem to take the upper hand and use violence to convince Washington that all Israel has to do is raise the white flag and they will calm down.

The evidence proves the opposite, and it took another savage attack and the inhuman murders of four Jews, three of them rabbis, while they were praying to make the Defense Minister realize that President Barack Obama is not his boss.

An Arab terrorist who police nabbed on Wednesday before he could stab a Jew posed as a hitchhiker but gave away his disguise when he stumbled in Hebrew as a Jewish driver offered him a ride.

The Jewish driver notified police of the suspicious “hitchhiker,” and officers arrived at the bus stop near the Jewish community of Dolev in Samaria. After a quick search, they discovered he was carrying a knife and a screwdriver.

He confessed to police that he was planning to ride to stab Jews on his way Jerusalem.

In Hebron, a man in his 20 raised the suspicion of Border Police officers at the Cave of the Patriarchs, where stabbing attempts are frequent.

The man was searched and was found to have been carrying a commando knife.

He showed signs of having drunk alcohol, which is forbidden by Muslim law, which does not recognize the Israeli law against carrying knives to carry out terrorist attacks.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu this week ordered all security units to go on high alert to try to prevent the recent wave of terrorism from spreading.

Arabs in a village north of Ramallah Wednesday morning accused Jews of setting fire to a local mosque in the pre-dawn hours, causing heavy damage to the first floor.

The village mayor said firefighters saved the rest of the building from serious damage.

There is no evidence that Jews were responsible for the fire, and there was no graffiti, but the mayor said he is sure “settlers” lit the match, as they allegedly did two years ago at another mosque in the village.

He took the opportunity to blame Jews for destroying olive trees.

“Only Jewish settlers would do this,” said the mayor, Faraj al-Naasan.

That is not always true because videos in the past have proven that Arabs often hack away at their own olive trees, usually ones that are too old to produce much fruit, and then blame Jews.

There are a few dozen Jewish hotheads who are capable of making trouble for everyone, Arabs and Jews alike, but in this case, there is a possibility that a short-circuit caused the fire. The Arabs said they had checked the electricity and there were no problems.

A poll of American Jewish voters carried out by the left-wing J Street lobby shows an overwhelming number of Jew support building in some Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

The results of the survey should be a wake-up call to President Barack Obama, who has surrounded himself with left-wing Jewish advisers and has given J Street a free pass to the White House while distancing traditional Jewish lobbies, particularly AIPAC.

J Street has been a consistent opponent of almost everything the Netanyahu government does, as reflected in President president’s holy ghost, otherwise known as the “Peace Process.”

A whopping 72 percent of polled American Jewish voters said they support construction in Jewish communities that are not outside the core settlement blocs. Twenty percent of that number back building for Jews in all of Judea and Samaria as well as Jerusalem.

Only 28 percent said Israel should freeze all construction in the same areas.

All of the respondents in the poll voted in last week’s mid-term elections. Nearly one-third of the respondents did not describe their affiliation with a stream of Judaism, while the breakdown for the others was 37 percent Reform, 20 percent Conservative and 10 percent Orthodox.

That means that the support for building in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria has deepened among Reform Jews, previously thought to be heavily left-wing and against a Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria.

A majority of American Jews polled also said they have a favorable view of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, contradicting assumptions that most Jews in the United States oppose him and his policies.

The survey also verified other estimates that 69 percent of American Jews voted for Democratic candidates last week, another indication that President Obama cannot assume that Jewish Democrats back his and J Street’s view that settlers are “illegal” and “illegitimate.”

The Obama administration’s constant pointing fingers at Israel for allegedly blocking a peace agreement appears to be wearing thin on American Jews.

While 85 percent support an active role for the United States in the Arab-Israeli conflict, slightly more than half of the respondents “oppose the United States playing an active role in helping the parties to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict if it meant the United States publicly stating its disagreements with Israel.”

In answer to the question, “Would you support or oppose the United States playing an active role in helping the parties to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict if it meant the United States exerting pressure on Israel to make the compromises necessary to achieve peace?” 54 percent replied in the negative.

The poll also showed massive support for Israel in the Protective Edge counter-terror war with Hamas this past summer. The 80 percent approval showed how little J Street’s lobby against Israel has influenced American Jews.

Most of its influence seems to have been felt inside the White House, and anyone thinking of running for the Democratic presidential nomination in two years will pay close attention to the poll.

Hillary Clinton is the most highly favored candidate among the Jewish who were polled, winning support of 66-69 percent if Jeb Bush were running as the GOP nominee, and 70 percent if Rand Paul were the Republican candidate.

The poll also showed that only 25 percent of U.S. Jews support the Boycott Israel-BDS movement.

As usual, Israel was near the bottom of the list of subjects that concern American Jews, but more significant was that “terrorism and national security” were the number four issue, after the economy, health care and Social Security/Medicare.

The Islamic State beheadings of two Americans, one of the them Jewish, and an increasing number of Islamic-linked attacks on American soil have brought terror closer to home and brought all Americans to better understand Israel’s refusal to consider sponsors of terrorism “peace partners.”

Reflecting the overall mood of the United States, 57 percent of American Jews “feel things have gotten pretty seriously off on the wrong track” in the United States.

Nevertheless, Obama remains more popular among American Jews than among most other voting blocs. Fifty-seven percent either “somewhat” or “strongly” approve of how Obama is handling his job as president and 53 percent approved the way Congress is functioning.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s announcement of big building plans for Jews in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria give President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry their golden opportunity to dump their self-defeating peace process before it makes their foreign policy look almost as pitiful as it is.

“We are not going to make peace for the Israelis and the Palestinians, Obama and Kerry have said over and over again.”

The truth is they have been lying through their teeth. They have turned almost every trick in the book to pressure Netanyahu to cave in on almost all of Abbas’ demands, but they also have done the same to Abbas to back off at least an inch.

Their typical American misunderstanding of anything east of Atlantic City and west of San Diego, make that Hawaii, never has more apparent since the war in Vietnam. The only difference is that the ungodly number of casualties of American soldiers in the war finally forced a bit of common sense in Washington, which ended the debacle in 1973. The Obama administration has stubbornly hung on to the peace process to maintain its dubious diplomatic dominance in the Middle East.

Abbas’ insistence to ditch the failed negotiations, which were a charade to disguise his eventual ultimatum, royally ticked off President Obama. But he couldn’t very well kiss off a decades-old peace process project without making Israel share the blame.

Netanyahu almost gave him enough opportunities to do so with previous building projects in areas claimed by the Palestinian Authority.

May of the “projects” for new homes were the same ones announced several times, each time representing a different bureaucratic process in the nightmare to build a home in Israel, but that doesn’t matter. Headlines are headlines, and the U.S. State Dept. is more interested in its own agenda of illusions than it is in facts on the ground.

The timing never was right for Obama, and the projects for homes in Jews never represented a sweeping change in the off-and-ion de fact freeze on developing Judea and Samaria for Jews.

All of that has changed. New roads, a “boardwalk” in Gush Etzion, parks and a host of other projects, whether they ever get off the ground or not, give Obama the excuse he needs to state, “We have said all along that it is up the Israeli and the Palestinians to decide if they want the peace process to succeed.”

The funny or unfunny part is that once upon a time, most Israelis and Arabs wanted the peace process to go ahead, with reasonable compromises on both sides. Thanks to Washington’s stubbornness, even the center-leftists in Israel know that there is no sense in making another agreement that simply is a basis for another war. On the Arab side, the word compromise is not in their vocabulary. That is how they lost the wars.

The American lack of understanding of the Middle East culture, and especially of the Arab mind, forced Abbas into his no-compromise stand. Previous U.S. administrations have given the Arab world so many concessions they simply whetted their insatiable appetite for more and more.

Israel, whether under Barak, Sharon, Olmert of Netanyahu, repeatedly buckled under, However, the United States never understood that you can push Israel up against the wall, and when you do, watch out.

Washington is not used to Israel saying “no,” but the threat of breaking up Jerusalem is too much even for center-left Israelis.

Given the impossibility of Abbas returning from his one-way street to the United Nations for recognition of a Palestinian Authority state, and given Netanyahu’s fantastic nose for smelling a political opportunity, the timing could not have been better for him to declare “game over.”

Israeli soldiers saved Jewish motorists from a firebombing attack Friday night when they shot and killed a Palestinian Authority-American teenager who was throwing a Molotov cocktail at passing cars on Highway 60, north of Jerusalem, Friday night.

Military spokesmen said that Israeli soldiers had set up a lookout patrol on the highway spotted the teenage terrorists hurling the firebomb and opened fire “in order to neutralize the threat to the lives of civilians driving on the highway.”

The terrorist, age 14, was identified as Orwah Hammad, who the U.S. State Dept. said was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and moved to the Palestinian Authority with his family at the age of 6.

He was from the village of Silwad, and residents told Haaretz that Hammad was the cousin of a terrorist who killed 10 Israelis in a sniper attack in 2002 and that his uncle was reportedly killed in the intifada that began in the late 1980s.

Hammad’s cousin admitted to the newspaper that he was among a group of that was throwing rocks at motorists, but U.S. State Dept. Psaki responded to the attack by sending “deepest condolences to the family of a U.S. citizen minor who was killed by the Israeli Defense Forces during clashes in Silwad.”

She made no mention of the circumstance of the shooting and simply stated, “We call for a speedy and transparent investigation, and will remain closely engaged with the local authorities, who have the lead on this investigation. We continue to urge all parties to help restore calm and avoid escalating tensions in the wake of the tragic recent incidents in Jerusalem and the West Bank.”

Psaki last week “condemned” Wednesday’s terrorist attack on the Jerusalem light rail train, when a three-month-old American-Israeli baby was killed, but unlike the American response strongly supporting Canada after the deadly attack that killed a Canadian solider in Ottawa the same day, Psaki suggested Israel do nothing.

She condemned the attack “in the strongest possible terms,” expressed “our deepest condolences to the family of the baby,” and then urged “all sides to maintain calm and avoid escalating tensions in the wake of this incident.”